Lost and Found

” A ring is a halo on your finger” – Douglas Coupland

Every so often, we all get our own little miracles, things that reaffirm our faith in basic goodness. I was lucky enough to have one of those recently and the timing could not have been more propitious. Summer if often a time of shorter days and lighter workloads in the business world, as people take vacations and spend time on the golf course. But for a variety of reasons, my work remained challengingly busy all summer. Add that to an incredibly fun personal schedule of summer concerts and festivals, wine touring and camping and it’s felt a lot like burning the candle at both ends for the last month or so. August saw something of a dearth of blog posts – I barely had time to sleep and laundry was a forgotten dream. It felt like all that was coming to a dreadful end as I slogged my way through the logistics of yet another round of conference planning. One of the “team events” saw me on Granville Island, at the end of an exhausting day, competing in an “Amazing Race” event. I hadn’t wanted to go, but sometimes the best ending come from the most dubious beginnings. You just never know when your own little miracle is waiting around the corner.

Our teams were all equipped with GPS’s and given hand drawn maps of Granville Island, with 2 hours to collect as many clues as possible. Being a bunch of intensely competitive Type A’s, we all took off at a run and were soon causing no small amount of mayhem in the public market, boutiques and byways of the island. One of our last clues found us at the Alder Bay dragonboat dock searching for a “rope to pull” clue. One of the guys spotted a rope hanging into the water off the dock, ran down and started manfully hauling up a crab trap holding a plastic pig. His exuberant efforts came to a bad end, however, as he watched his wedding ring catch on the rope, slip off his finger and go through the slats of the dock into the dark and very dirty waters of Alder Bay. It was not how we saw our adventure ending. Turns out he had been married all of 6 weeks and despite the urgings of his new bride he had not yet taken his custom-made, engraved ring in to be resized. Pretty much a disaster and it definitely cast a pall over the rest of the evening. By the end of the night, after a few bottles of wine, I had been tasked with finding a diver who would try to recover the missing ring . . .do they think I’m a miracle worker?

By early next morning the incredibly capable and proactive Jono at Pinnacle Pursuits had emailed me with the contact information for a diver who was willing to go down and take a look for the ring. A quick call found our intrepid diver on the dock, in his wetsuit, ready to go in – all for the princely sum of $200. Have at it, I said, expecting to shell out 200 clams for nada. But some special guardian angel was looking after that ring, because not 10 minutes later I got the call that he was up and had the ring in hand. Unbelievable.

A halo on your finger

I delivered the ring back to its rightful owner and as he said to me, sometime you just have to believe in miracles, because he really thought his wedding ring was gone forever and a replacement ring would always be, well, a replacement ring. And now they really DO think I’m a miracle worker, and I’m not going to dissuade them.

Things lost and things found has been a theme in my life for the past couple of weeks, and it all started with the lost and found ring. One of the losts was all mine and you would think that, knowing from the beginning that the end had already been written I would have been better prepared when the time came, but I wasn’t. And I had to do battle with that green-eyed beast, jealousy, which I found both surprising and unbecoming as it’s not something we cerebral Aquarians see in ourselves. I definitely wasn’t at my best for a while, but I’ve found my equilibrium again. There’s a song lyric that goes “friends, lovers or nothing, there can only be one…there’ll never be an in-between“, but something I’ve learned is that there is always an in-between if we can only remain open to the possibilities.

And a couple of founds – one for me personally and one for a very good friend. A friend that I have known since high school found a lost love – they have been apart for 20+ years and lived a lot of life in the in-between times. When they told me I wasn’t even that surprised, it was one of those moments when you just sort of feel the cogs of the universe drop back into place, it just seemed so right. There is (I hope) a much longer blog to come – it’s a fantastic story – and I get the rights because apparently my “live life to the max” writing helped inspire the reunion. How incredible to think that something I wrote led to a friend transforming their life in such a positive way. I’m thrilled and humbled.

My own found was so surprising, I still don’t quite know what to make of it and as I’m writing this I’ve only just realized that the timing was nothing short of astonishing. I hope it will be another really good story someday soon. There is a sense in my life just now of wheels turning within wheels, of pieces of a puzzle dropping into place, of events coming into alignment. I had some things to learn (or maybe relearn is a better way of putting it) and I think, no I know, because I had a great tutor, that I’ve done that – so my “lost” was not really a loss, it was a huge, awesome, WOW. Long before I read The Alchemist I would always say that if your life seems really difficult, it’s because you are on the wrong path and that when you get on the right path it all just gets so much easier – doors open and the universe does seem to conspire to help you. So I think I must be on the right path, because so many amazingly wonderful things just keep on happening. Yes, there are some tough moments, but they are all part of the bigger plan. One of my challenges is learning the patience to wait for events to unfold as they should, to give up the illusion of control I thought I needed and had over every detail. And to remember to be thankful for the people who become part of the journey, because we are part of each others’ journey and it’s neither good or bad, it is just as it’s meant to be. Part of this adventure is that it’s a ride I”m not in control of. I’m just going to have to appreciate every moment of it and roll with whatever comes my way. I can’t wait to see where it’s going.

I’ve had some old Counting Crows on heavy rotation this past week – for me it’s always about the lyrics and Adam Duritz is so incredibly talented. I’m once again thankful for that breeding ground of talent, the San Francisco Bay area – home of (almost) all of my fav bands. Goodnight Elizabeth is a song of regret and such amazing storytelling, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. I was captivated by the imagery, and especially “If you wrap yourself in daffodils, I will wrap myself in pain, If you are the Queen of California, baby I’m the king of pain”. To be able to write like that *sigh*.